


Of Green Liquids and Light Defense

by kai_foxflight



Series: A World Beyond [7]
Category: SHINee, f(x)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Blood and Gore, Injury, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 01:42:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11590380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kai_foxflight/pseuds/kai_foxflight
Summary: When the zombie apocalypse started, ten young adults were locked in a laboratory to find a cure or die there.





	Of Green Liquids and Light Defense

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: zombies

A thud shook the contents of the room, equipment flying up and then crashing back on the table with a loud clatter. Taemin glanced at Jinki out of the corner of his eye, the older boy not at all concerned by the event. “Should I—”

“Jonghyun and Minho took care of it, Taemin. Focus on your work.” The youngest sighed but nodded, turning back to his table Amber and Luna. He ignored the small smiles that flashed at him, instead pulling his mask back up his face and his gloves up his arms. “Have you had any luck yet?”

“Just,” his voice was strained with concentration as an eyedropper quavered slightly in his hand, “about.” Amber reached in without a word, grabbing it from him and letting Taemin relax as she did the fine work with ease. “Thanks.”

“Not a problem,” the words were muffled by her mask, barely audible even with how close they were. “Luna. Sodium hydroxide and potassium acetate solutions. Can you mix some more?”

“How much?”

“Standard amount.” She scurried off, covered shoes rubbing on the ground just enough to produce a noise that tickled all their ears. Another bang and thud shook the contents of the lab again and Amber cursed as she pulled back quickly, hand held under the dropper to catch the small bit that dripped out. “Someone tell Victoria to stop showing off! We’re working here!”

Jinki snorted across the room and Taemin even cracked a smile under his mask. “It’s kind of hard to keep the world peaceful with walking dead bodies throwing themselves at the doors and windows. You get me?”

Heads whipped around to face Krystal in the doorway, mask merely held over her mouth as she barely entered the room. “Just wanted to warn you—Jonghyun got cut.”

“Fuck!” Taemin was the first to drop everything as carefully as he could, pushing past Amber and through Krystal and out the door in seconds. Every step of the way, part of the scrubs were lost until he was running in just jeans and his button-up, socks on his feet with his shoes abandoned somewhere with the scrub covers. It took a few minutes before Jinki and Amber were following, their shrubs also shed and first aid kits carried by both.

...

Jonghyun gave a large smile when a panting Taemin rounded the corner of the hall, teeth smeared with blood and sweat staining his face. Victoria glanced up for only a second before returning to pressing on a slash in his arm. “You’re an idiot. How the hell did one of them cut you?” He dropped to his knees next to the two, pushing the girl’s hands away as he tore his belt off and tied it tight above the cut. Immediately, the flow of blood slowed, and Taemin glanced up at Jonghyun with hard eyes. “I’m honestly curious. How did this happen?”

“Shard of glass.” He winced when Taemin poked around, teeth gritting against themselves when the pain became unbearable. “Not my fault one of the idiots got an icepick.”

A thud shook the floor again and the three further down the hall to where the lights started to dim. Victoria stood then froze, looking down and then back at the two. “I’m okay with him. Go help Minho and Key.”

“Never thought I’d see the day you’d be so bossy.”

“Never thought I’d see the day when I could flick a nerve in your arm.” As Jonghyun’s eyes widened, Taemin smirked. “ _ Do not _ piss off the person in charge of stitching you back up.”

“Well it’d be lovely if you had some stuff to stitch it with, wouldn’t it?” Taemin’s eyes narrowed and Jonghyun gave a laugh that ended abruptly with Taemin poking near the wound. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

“I warned you.” As more feet rounded the corner, he didn’t even look at the two until they set cases down next to him. Immediately, Taemin was flicking both open and pulling out all he needed to treat the cut. Jonghyun’s shirt was stripped, alcohol cleaned the wound, and the balled up fabric was stuffed in his mouth by a laughing Amber just before Taemin started the stitching. No amount of Jonghyun’s screaming stopped him, but the fighter managed to stay as still as possible until Taemin tied it off and climbed off his lap. When Jinki held up three fingers, he gave a laugh of his own. “That’s a new record!”

“Because you didn’t give me any fucking meds!” Tears were running from Jonghyun’s eyes as he groaned from the slight movement of his arm. “Jesus, Tae, next time warn me at least.”

The boy ignored him, glancing over his shoulder at the eldest of them. “Do we have any preventatives left?”

Even with the sound of the occasional splat of killed zombies, the silence in the hall seemed unbreakable. Three sets of eyes turned to Jinki, but he did not raise his own from the floor. “Two doses. It’s not enough.”

“I’ll be fine.” Jonghyun forced his smile to not waver as attention turned to him. “I mean, it was just glass. Not like one of them cut me with his hands or anything. Right?”

...

Amber’s arm wrapped over Krystal’s waist, pulling her tighter so the sleeping girl curled into her side. Sunlight filled the room from the cracks around the shades and even though the rest of their room was out cold, sleep was not gracing Amber’s mind once more. As the sun rose higher, she eventually pulled away from Krystal and stumbled out of their bed, cold floor meeting her feet as she shuffled out of the room silently.

The hallways should have been deserted. Should. None of them were supposed to be awake at that hour.

But not even halfway to the kitchen of their lab, she turned the corner straight into Key. He blinked a few times, eyes narrowed against the bright artificial lights that would not turn off. “What are you doing up?”

“I could ask you the same.”

Key held up a water bottle and some pills. “Jonghyun’s moaning in pain.”

“Couldn’t sleep. I think I had a breakthrough, but I can’t remember it.” There was a snort of laughter from the male. “I figured some breakfast would help.”

“Midday snack?”

She cracked a small smile at the inside joke, nodding slightly. “Guess so. Better not tell Jinki and Victoria.”

“What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” Key took a step to his right, walking past Amber and turning to continue to face her. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be there with Jonghyun too. Might as well let the others sleep even if he can’t.”

...

Jonghyun poked the food on his plate but did not lift a bite to his lips. His right arm hung limply down, fingers dangling lifelessly just a few feet above the ground. Every now and then, his eyes flicked around the room, but otherwise, it was hard to tell he was even awake.

But halfway through the meal, Amber froze. Her spoon clattered to her plate and without explanation, she pushed away from the table forcefully. Neither Key nor Jonghyun could react before she was running out of the room, and by the time they caught up to her, she was already suited up and locked in the lab. The door wouldn’t open for either and she didn’t stop her racing work for even a second to let them in.

And so hours ticked by as the two fell asleep in the hall outside and Amber worked non-stop behind the glass. It was only when Jinki entered with Taemin and Luna tailing him that she stopped, turning around with a huge smile under her mask. She held up a Petri dish of red liquid. “May I present to you… the first isolation of  _ mortuum ambulantem _ .” Silence met her and she slowly placed the dish back down. “This might seem hard to believe, but we’ve been trying to extract and isolate the wrong bacteria this whole time.”

Taemin and Luna turned to Jinki and he only stared at the girl. “How long have you been here?”

Amber blushed, digging the toe of her shoe into the ground for a second as she counted the time. “Seven hours?”

“Working on this?” She nodded. “Where did you come up with the idea?” He cleared the distance between them in a few strides, looking over all of her work, the information recorded, the multiple trials set up, the scribbled notes and cross-outs. “This is genius.”

“I woke up and just… came to remember it. It was with Key and Jonghyun that I…” She froze, jaw slackening as realization hit. “Jonghyun. We have to isolate him.”

“What for?”

“The incubation period is less than 24 hours. He could start showing signs at any moment and—”

“He wasn’t bitten. He’s okay.”

“ _ No he’s not _ .” Amber gestured to the table, to all of her work and proof. “I only swabbed an abscess on one. This was just the fluid that came from there. And with all the ones that have run into those doors, there’s definitely some trace of abscess fluid on the glass. There’s no telling how long the infection stays alive for.”

...

Jonghyun didn’t react as his hands were strapped to the chair, his eyes only following the scientists lethargically. “Am I sick?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out, Jjong.” Taemin stroked the elder’s cheek, but with the rubber gloves in the way, it did nothing to comfort him. With a small sigh, he got to work cutting his T-shirt off, the shreds of fabric discarded in a bag in Luna’s hands immediately. A heart monitor was attached to him, then a blood oxygen level monitor, then a brain activity monitor. Taemin tried to give a comforting smile, but Jonghyun saw nothing more than a shifting of the mask over his face. “You’ll be okay though. Amber did some amazing work and we might be close to finding a cure if you are.”

“But how soon?” Tears sprung to Jonghyun’s eyes and as much as Taemin wished to wipe them away, he forced himself to stay back and instead collect them with a test tube. “You and I have both seen; all it takes is a few days and—”

“Then I’ll stay up all day and night for those few days to save you.”

“Taemin!” He glanced at Amber across the room. “Come with me. I’ll need your knowledge for this. Jinki and Luna will watch Jonghyun.”

There wasn’t time for him to say all he wanted and with pained eyes, Taemin slowly let go of Jonghyun’s hand that grasped his own. Each step he took towards the door caused him physical pain, knives shooting through his shoes and through his feet. But still, he gave a final smile through the glass outside—visible now that his mask was removed.

...

Krystal huffed in annoyance as her hairband snapped in the middle of tying her hair up. It took a few seconds to pull a new one down her wrist with her teeth, but she did and managed to tighten the ponytail on top of her head just in time for the first opportunity.

Key didn’t even have a chance to grab his own gun properly before she aimed and shot, bullet going in one end of the zombie’s head and out the other with a splatter of black brain matter. “You know,” she leaned back slightly to be able to see Key and not just the butt of her gun, “it’s sort of sad when you think about it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If they find the cure, these things could be turned back to people. But until then, we have to keep killing them. What if they have loved ones that are still alive and well out there?”

“Barely anything is alive and well out there.”

“But we are.” She fired another shot, missing the center just slightly and going through the eye of one of them. Key finished the creature off with a better-centered bullet. “Doesn’t that prove that others can be out there?”

“We’re only alive because we’ve been locked in here since before this whole outbreak happened. This whole center was built to withstand infecta.”

“Don’t call them that.”

“What? Infecta?”

“You treat these people as if they were animals, not people.” Krystal tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear, staring down the scope of her rifle as she lined up her shot. Before she let a bullet fly, however, a light was shining out from floors below and they only watched with morbid fascination as the zombie shriveled under the magnified light that was most likely caused by Minho. “I get calling them infecta to Jinki and them because they get it better than slang terms but, like, that’s not even proper Latin to begin with. And they are people underneath the infection.”

“They are people until it eats the last parts of humanity from them.”

“But when that happens, they die.” Krystal fired a shot before Minho could focus his light ray again, hitting the knee of the one that was approaching and sending him crawling. In seconds, he was joining the other few in a small group on the ground and fire engulfed them. Key snorted. “None of us feel mercy killing them. Victoria just freaking roasted at least one of them alive. But each of them still have some sort of thread of humanity left to still be walking.”

“It’s not big enough to be saved though.”

...

Luna groaned as she pried Jonghyun’s mouth open. As soon as it was possible, she placed a funnel inside and let his jaw clamp closed around it again as she tipped his head back and start to slowly pour a thick grey liquid down it. He choked for a few seconds and if not for the mask and shield over her face, some would have splattered on her. Jinki only glanced back at them, biting his tongue at the crude means of feeding. “No nasogastric tube?”

“His saliva keeps eating through them.” Now that his body was used to swallowing, she had the first dose of liquid done in just under a minute. Leaving the funnel in place, she allowed him to take a few breaths before starting over again with another large dose. “What’s the point of this?”

“Nutrients. We are mixing it based off the results to accommodate all the shifts his body is going through as the infection takes hold.” Jinki pulled the syringe he was filling out of a bottle and flicked the tip as he started to walk towards them. “Stand back for a minute. He’s not going to like this.”

Jonghyun’s dulled eyes flicked around, trying to track Jinki’s movement up until the elder leaned over him. His free hand was placed on Jonghyun’s shoulder as he leaned over the younger male to see him face-to-face. “I’m sorry for how much this is going to hurt, Jonghyun. I really am.” And without warning, he stuck the needle into the seated man’s neck. It took less than a second for him to try and squirm away, but the growing amount of bindings kept him in place. “Everything will be better soon though. I promise.”

Jonghyun only gave a slow blink, his eyes even more unfocused. After a few seconds, Jinki pulled the needle back out. Instead of blood coming from the prick, the skin seemed to bubble and grow over in seconds. Jinki only sighed, giving another soft pat on Jonghyun’s shoulder, and then he turned back to Luna. “You can feed him again, but make it quick. He’s not going to be awake for much longer.”

...

Taemin gave a soft groan, as he had been for a few hours now, and his arm wrapped around his stomach as he stopped working for a minute. Amber glanced up at him, hands still working to document everything they were doing, but in seconds she was dropping the pen and joining Taemin on his side of the table. Her hands grabbed the tops of his arms painfully as she held him upright, supporting the majority of his weight as his body gave out for a second. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything with Jonghyun last night.” The boy was silent, eyes averted to the floor on the opposite side. “Taemin.”

“We… might have.” His voice was weak, barely a whisper that could have gotten lost in the lab easily.

But instead of Amber’s anger, her hands shook a little as she helped him up. “You should have been isolated hours ago and supportive therapy could have been started and—”

“Jonghyun.” He gave a painful swallow, curling a little tighter as another wave of pain tore through his torso. “We have to help Jonghyun first.”

“‘We’ nothing. You are being isolated and I’m working on this.” The motions were a blur for Taemin as she forced him to stumble along, leading him back to the room where Jonghyun was being kept. He’d barely made it through the door before his body gave in and he was falling, sinking to the floor but never meeting it as Jinki caught him.

By the time the world stopped spinning enough for him to see properly, Amber was gone and Taemin had the same face looming over him before a needle pierced his neck.

...

“I think this should work.” Jinki practically cradled the small vial Amber handed him two sleepless days later, the faint green liquid inside the cause and solution of everything. “A cure. I think.”

“Is it too late for him though?” Luna brushed Jonghyun’s sweaty bangs back from his greyed skin, thumb gently pulling his eyelids open to check his pupils. “It’s 3 days already.”

“It’s not the full course yet.” Amber’s eyes jumped around the room, unable to focus on much. Eventually, however, they landed on Taemin’s wide eyes looking through the glass from the room next to them. She tried to give him a small thumbs-up, but not even a flicker of recognition flashed across his face. “It’s the best we can hope for. I’m trying my best to get more.”

“Well we should see if it has any effect first.” He filled half the vial into a syringe and turned towards Jonghyun’s lifeless form. Just like the first shot days ago, he went right for the neck. The result was almost immediate—Jonghyun’s eyes flew open and he sputtered a breath as the grey brightened slightly closer to his normal skin tone.

There was silence in the room as the needle slid out, the smallest drop of red blood sliding out from the cut before the bubbling healing happened. Eyes looked from the vial to Jonghyun and then back. “Did it… do anything?”

“It’s going to take multiple doses to find out.” Amber glanced at the information scrawled down for the time, mind fluttering as she took it all in. Taemin’s pleading face flashed before her eyes, Jonghyun’s reaction to it, when the fighter first got cut, when they were first isolated in the building, the first time the nine met, every memory from the past two years.

...

_ There’d been ten of them, originally. It was only on the first night of isolation that they became nine. She had been the youngest; maybe the reality of their situation was too much for her mind to handle. The first night, she ran right out the front doors and was bitten right in front of the group. Trials hadn’t even started, the lab was just starting to be organized, and the infecta were a minority at the time. It took only two months until the uninfected were the minority. Governments fell apart, the world fell into disorder as no cure for the mystery disease appeared. Slowly, one by one, groups set of eradicating the disease were wiped out or simply disappeared. _

_ Soon, the SM Laboratories team of South Korea was the only group left working. _

_ The fate of the world rested in the hands of nine 20-somethings. _

_... _

_ “First things first,” the appointed leader looked around at them, “we have to figure out who’s who. I have a list of names and positions, not faces.” _

_ “Jinki; head scientist.” _

_ “Jonghyun; defense specialist.” _

_ “Krystal; firearms specialist.” _

_ “Sulli; nurse practitioner.” _

_ “Minho; light defense specialist.” Silence engulfed the table as confused stares faced him. “I, uh, use mirrors and lens and stuff and focus the light. It fries them.” He nudged the boy next to him, shifting uncomfortably under the attention. _

_ “Taemin; infectious disease specialist.” _

_ “Amber; biomedical researcher.” _

_ “Key; head firearms specialist.” Krystal glared at him. _

_ The leader only nodded, clearing her throat when attention turned to her. “Victoria. I’m a martial arts specialist.” _

_ “Well isn’t this easy?” Key looked around at them. “We know who’s defense and who’s the nerds in the lab.” _

_ “These ‘nerds’ are going to save the world.” Taemin’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the taller man. _

_ “Not without us protecting you, you aren’t.” Jonghyun became the receiving end of his glare and he wavered slightly under it. “Because, like… zombies. They’ll get in.” _

_ “They’re called infecta.” _

_ “Infecta, zombie, whatever. They’re still walking dead in the end.” _

_... _

“Give it all to Jonghyun.”

“What?” Amber felt the stares on her, but her eyes only stayed locked on Taemin’s. While he had no control over his body, she could pretend the corners of his mouth were turning up on his own accord, as if he had heard her. “All of it? To him? But Taemin—”

“Ask to cure Jonghyun first.” She finally broke the gaze. Jinki slowly nodded, putting the vial down with the syringe. “I’ll bring more as soon as I have it ready. It shouldn’t be long now.”

...

It took two days of the green liquid given every hour on the hour before Jonghyun was deemed  _ recovering _ . And as soon as that was said, attention was turned to Taemin.

The moment the needle pierced his neck for the first dose, alarms were going off, power shutting down in seconds and bathing the rooms in darkness. In the minute it took for the power to switch to the generator, it was all over.

The brain activity monitor, picking up so little before, read nothing. Monitors everywhere were beeping and wailing as his body failed. There was no pain and no joy, no shock and no numbness, just a cruel reality in the event.

In less than an hour, his body was sealed in a chamber and slowly bathed in sodium hydroxide solution. When the sun rose that morning and the others gathered outside the lab, there was no words said to explain the empty room—they all simply  _ knew _ . But no one could even find tears to cry.

...

Jonghyun’s eyes opened with his own power a week after the treatments started. He came to with a groan that started the two half-asleep watchers of the room and in seconds, they were flitting around him. Monitors were checks, injections given, fluids poured down his throat, and he didn’t even get a chance to speak before a new medicine was making him sleepy again.

It took two weeks for him to be awake and unbound. Body stiff from disuse, one of the first things he did was walk around with Luna’s help supporting him. Every time he passed the dark window, his eyes looked through, as if something was missing and he knew that but he couldn’t place it.

“Where’s Taemin?” The scientists in the room froze. “Is he still being a workaholic in the lab? Have you made sure he has been sleeping too?” None of the three turned to him and Jonghyun continued to ramble on, his recently-found ability to talk once again amazing to him. “He wasn’t too scared sleeping alone in our room, right?”

“You should have told one of us, Jjong.”

“Told you what?”

“That you and he…” Jinki’s voice cracked.

“You and he were in a relationship. A very  _ intimate  _ relationship.” Amber’s voice held no emotion as she spoke, finally looking at Jonghyun but not meeting his eyes. “Taemin… was infected through you, Jonghyun.”

“But he’s better, right? You guys made me better so you could have made him better, right? Right?” He didn’t need an answer before the tears came, shoulders shaking harshly and air impossible to breath. “He… because of me… he’s… no… he can’t be…”

“We made the cure, Jonghyun.” Amber sounded closer than he remembered and when Jonghyun opened his eyes, she was kneeling right in front of him. “He helped me. He didn’t tell anyone he was sick because he wanted you better first. If we had given him some of the doses, you wouldn’t have survived. But as soon as we had enough, we tried. Really, we did. It was just too late.”

...

For the first time in years, the doors of the laboratory were opened and, armed with darts with the cure, the eight stood ready to take on anything that came their way. The few governments that stood had shipments of the cure going out, hospitals around the world sourcing it from them, and all that was left was implementation.

The seemingly impossible step of implementation, but everything of the disaster seemed impossible.

Impossible just screams  _ I’m possible _ though, and that stood true.

....

It took years for cities to because even remotely close to what they once were. Years of cleaning and sanitation and rebuilding and recovering. Lives couldn’t pick up just where they left off, and so, step by step, society recovered. One city at a time, buildings were rebuilt, homes recovered. A death toll of over two billion, two-sevenths of the world gone. Without a trace.

Taemin’s body wasn’t removed from the chamber for ten years. But ten years to the day of his death, the eight returned to the locked doors of the laboratory and walked in, together. There was practically nothing left; the liquid that was to be left behind was almost all dried up and only husks of bones remained, crumbling to dust from the slightest disturbance.

Even the saviors of the world weren’t indestructible. But they gave their lives to something great.


End file.
